About

Brock Obama is a fictional hybrid character which combines the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama and Brock, one of the main trainer characters from the anime series Pokémon. The character is usually manifested in the form of photoshopped images with Brock’s head or face superimposed onto portrait images of Obama or President Obama’s face placed onto pictures of Brock. On some occasions, character images of rock-type Pokémons like Geodude or Onix may be added into background for humorous effect.

Origin

Though its exact point or date of origin remains unknown, the mash-up was most likely inspired by the similarity between the two names, Barack and Brock. The earliest known iteration on the web can be attributed to a YTMND page from February 2008.[1] However, the meme began to gain recognition due to YouTube videos uploaded in November 2008.

Spread

The Facebook page[2] titled “Brock Obama” was launched as early as on January 30th, 2010.

According to the Facebook profile description, Brock Obama is currently serving his term as the President of the United States from his office in Pewter City and presumably the party leader of Brockists, a fictitious political-religious group of users who support Brock Obama. In addition, the administrator of the Facebook page has posted numerous status updates with the so-called scriptures from the book of Brockism. As of August 5th, 2013 Brock Obama’s Facebook Page has over 175,000 likes and 4,000 related images.

The Urban Dictionary[3] entry for “Brockism” was first submitted on July 1st, 2011, which reads:

Brockism is the political and religious philosophy of Brock Obama. Contrary to popular belief, Brock Obama is not just a personality on Facebook. He is the single most powerful political mind in the Kanto region.

Brockism centers on kicking as much ass as possible with rocks, trolling religious extremists and political zealots, and addressing honest concerns about Pokemon and the Internet in general. Brockism has spawned a storm of Brock knockoffs, all of which should be trolled, save for his archenemy Amabo Kcorb.

As the Facebook page continued to gain membership, other related pages in tribute to fictional political candidates began popping up on Facebook, the most popular example being Amabo Kcorb[4]. Amabo is Brock’s evil twin, whose name is the palindrome of “Brock” and dons an evil-looking mustache and goatee.

Hijacking of Facebook Page

On September 18th, 2011, Brock Obama’s page was hijacked by a relatively unknown troll. According to the Facebook page, the hacker took control of one of the admin’s page and vandalized the Brock Obama page. As a result, the page shifted focus from Pokemon-related satire to My Little Pony images and the profile picture of Brock Obama was replaced with a picture of Hitler photoshopped onto Abraham Lincoln’s head. In addition to vandalizing Brock Obama’s Facebook page, the hacker managed to take down another Facebook page for Amabo Kcorb.

For three days, the hijacker continued to post what would be considered very ‘un Brock-like’ status updates and photos. Fans of “Brock Obama” page were dismayed with the irrelevant postings and the page lost nearly 10,000 subscribers in three days. Meanwhile, a mirrored version of the original “Brock Obama” Facebook page was launched and gained over 12,500 members in the first 72 hours. Many other copycat pages soon followed suit, claiming to be the back-up version of the original Brock Obama page. On September 21st, the original administrator regained control of the Facebook page, but similar takeovers of the Facebook page have been reported since.

After the original administrator gained control of the page, the page was hijacked, yet again, by random trolls who “intended to change the world” with a Facebook page. The page changed owners several times after the hijacking of the page. Sometime in 2012, the page was hijacked by other unknown trolls. The admins fought publicly with each other after the hijackings took place. Fortunately, the page was deleted in 2013 and the page run by the original admins is still posting[2].

Deletion of the hijacked Brock Obama Facebook page in 2013

On the morning of July 8th, 2013, the hijacked Brock Obama Facebook page was deleted by Facebook. On July 8th, the Facebook page Quin posted this photo to its page:

Quin reported the Facebook page for harassment and subsequently had it removed by Facebook. The hijacked Brock Obama page tried to appeal this decision and was denied by Facebook, thus the page was deleted permanently.

Brock Obama from September 2011 to July 2013

After the Brock Obama page was hijacked, the administrator “Chazz Black Hawkinson” and his friend “Kam Jong-Il” (currently Kam John-Oliver) created a back-up page which gained 12,500 likes within the first 72 hours. The page has been in possession of both administrators until July 2012, when the page was briefly hijacked by an unknown troll. The trolls that hijacked the page returned the Facebook page to Kam Jong-Il, who vowed to never lose the page. After this, Chazz Black Hawkinson quit being an administrator on the page and handed over the control to his best friend, Kam Jong-Il.

Since July 2012 the page has been run by only Kam Jong-Il. There have been reports that new administrators that pop-up from time to time, however, “Kam” reports that he is the only permanent admin and any other admins are typically removed after a few days.

The page shows “Kam John-Oliver” as the main featured admin, who has over 400 followers on his account. Kam John-Oliver has been an admin of Brock Obama since September 2011.

Chazz Black Hawkinson and Kam John-Oliver still communicate with each other frequently. Chazz recently left for boot camp so that one day he can become a “Navy SEAL”.

Amabo Kcorb

Amabo Kcorb is a Facebook page that spawned in the Summer of 2011. The Amabo Kcorb character is the “evil twin brother” of Brock Obama. The pages interact frequently. Both Brock Obama and Amabo Kcorb will “reverse” each others’ statuses, and only people who like both pages will understand the references that they are making. Sometimes the pages will argue with each other via page wall-to-wall posts.

As of August 2013, the Amabo Kcorb page has 57,456 likes and over 1,000 related photos.

The info page reads “I am the evil twin of Brock Obama” and “I enjoy taking long walks on the beach and kicking Magikarp”. There is no currently listed featured page owner at the time.